Source of Photos and Videos for ATV?

I'm thinking of getting an ATV for my parents who want to be able to view their pics on the TV and play music through it.

What sources of photos/music does the apple TV support. My parents photo and music library sit on a macbook. They have some pics in the photo stream but would also like to have some albums they can use for screensaver that currently reside on their MB. Do they need to have their macbook on for them to stream these or can they be transferred to the cloud (any limitations on number?) or the ATV itself?

...and if the MB leaves the home sometimes, another option would be to buy a mac or windows machines capable of running iTunes as the always-at-home, always-on solution for this. Even an old, used machine good enough for run iTunes can cover this need. Store their music and pics on it and hide it away somewhere. Then the MB can come and go (or be turned off) as desired and still have pics & music for the TV.

OR, shop around for TV first generation- the one that could have content synced to it's internal hard drive. Set that up and sync their music and photos from that MB and it will all be internal on that model, playable whether the MB is on or at home.

Your entire iTunes library and your photo library on a Mac is available to any generation Apple TV connected to the same wifi network. The Mac must be on and iTunes must be on. Easy - can do slide shows from the Apple TV.

The next release of tvOS (ATV 4) will have better support for iCloud Photos. Your parents may want to fully support iCloud Photos assuming mainly using iOS Devices to take the photos. I still use iTunes on my Mac Mini but with the full support for iCloud Photos I would use it instead. But the current information about support for iCloud Photos is still not "full" support but better support. Maybe when the finally release is out it will even better. Assuming another 30 days or so. But certainly over time I am hoping for the same support that is on the iPhone/iPad.

At the moment, my own experience with sharing my local photos via iTunes is also extremely bad. I still do not understand how the system selects those few photos, out of 3000+ I have in my Aperture library, that make it to my TV screen. The number of photos visible on aTV is extremely limited and selection totally unpredictable. YMMV.

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